wealth

feels like i haven’t slept in a long time. this week has been full of long days and really short nights. I’m so tired i’m nearly panicky. Maybe later, tomorrow or the next day? I’ll get to write about the panel yesterday, three of us talking to 150 social service worker students at a local college– about prostitution and the charter challenges here in Canada, and how harm reduction doesn’t. I want to write about that, and then about  the young woman who came up to me after to ask what she should do if a child discloses she’s been sexually exploited, and about the young man who came up and asked me what i meant when i said that thing about men shouldn’t sexualize the women in the room, in their lives; and about the young woman who was rivetted by M’s story of the young woman, girl, really–prostituted by a pimp twice her age, high on crack–who was so smitten with M’s pet rabbit and asked to hold him for a little bit; and the young man who asked why we didn’t talk about men in prostitution, why do we say it’s just a female issue? and about the stir when S started us all off by telling her classmates that prostitution is “paid rape”– and the women who thanked us, and the young man who asked S where he could put his energy and commitment to good use and the women who met our eyes and shook our hands and said, “thank you. We never hear this kind of thing, you’ve given me lots to think about.”

those were happy moments.

And the applause when the young woman in the front said, “why isn’t there anyone here telling us about the other side?”

that was a sad moment.

there were LOTS of both such moments in those two hours.

I felt, even though i’m not sleeping, and i’m kinda grieving, I think, and L. said to me tonight, after our meeting, “you’re in shock, you need to give yourself time to grieve”–even though i’m going ninety miles an hour and just barely holding off this sort of panic, sort of temper tantrum, sort of wracking sobs–even though all that–I feel as if I am wealthy. Like really well taken care of. Like I will never need anything.

and I want to write about Mark’s art opening, and how wonderful it was that all my worlds converged for just a really short time last night and how I felt wrapped in the embrace of all of the things and people and places that shaped me. When a big thing kinda crumbles, it’s good–it’s  essential–to have lots of other big things to hang on to. J and I broke up. But there are all these beautiful people just touching down to say, ‘hey. you belong here, too’ — folks i know, folks I don’t know–

I tell ya. lucky me.

this didn’t make sense, but i’ll add to it later, maybe. probably. right now, though, I have to try to sleep.

g’night…